Maybe it started with department store John Lewis’ ‘Shadow’ Christmas ad in 2007, or maybe the annual Doctor Who Christmas Special, or maybe a tough economy is fueling the need for more ‘feel good’ marketing, but the past few years have seen UK retailers pull out all the stops for their Christmas ads.
Grocery store Sainsbury’s ‘Mog’ spot is the first one I’ve seen so far this year, and it is beautiful. It’s like a mini Wallace & Gromit or Paddington Bear movie in three-and-a-half minutes. My daughter (two and a half) watched it 3 times in a row – which means we willingly chose to watch 10 whole minutes of advertising.
Last Christmas, this was Fiona’s favourite song (and video):
She could not get enough of it, and spent a lot of time doing her own version of ‘criming‘. It wasn’t long before my husband and I were sick unto death of the song, but of course Fiona wasn’t, which meant that I kept having to pull it up on YouTube.
Social media/pop culture junkie that I am, I couldn’t help noticing it was really racking up views: In December, the video had about 10 million views; by January, it was up to 13 million; by the summer (when Fiona was less interested but it was still in her YouTube playlist), it was up to 20 million.
This kind of long-term traction is very unusual for YouTube: Sure, sometimes a video by an unknown person goes viral and gets a few million views in the span of a week or two; once in a while an older, hitherto-unnoticed video (typically of something super-cute) gets featured on Gawker and gets a couple of million views. But it’s rare to see a video by an unknown continuously generate millions of views, 2+ years after it was first posted, especially if the original poster isn’t producing much other content and isn’t actively promoting their personal brand.
It started to make me nostalgic for the early days of YouTube, when Brookers was the height of creativity and LisaNova was still doing Affirmation Girl.
Then I started to wonder: Here’s this guy, dancing alone in his studio apartment in Germany, racking up millions of views – and for what? Other people have turned their talking dogs into whole careers, so why is this guy basically MIA even as his video is doing what every serious YouTuber wishes their video would do.
Turns out someone else was paying attention, too: He recently turned up in this Deka ad in Germany.
Esoteric back story only interesting to serious YouTube fangirls? Maybe. But it’s still an interesting ad you’ve never seen.
Interesting ads you’ve never seen: I’m a sucker for Paul Weller
Fell down a rabbit hole tonight, which started with Noel Fielding and somehow ended up at this ad for DAKS (a brand I feel I should probably have been familiar with, but wasn’t). It’s got Paul Weller playing piano in some kind of deluxe drawing room and singing a snippet of a duet with his daughter Leah, who looks like a perfect combination of her father and mother (DC Lee). They’re both dressed (and lit, and shot) beautifully, and I found myself wondering what Jam-era Paul Weller – the hard-core socialist who thought Margaret Thatcher was the root of all evil – would have thought of this version of himself.
